I track people who are disrupting the world of mobile technology. Non-conformists, innovators and agitators are this blog's unsung heroes, from entrepreneurs to scientists, to rebellious hackers. I'm the author of "We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous and the Global Cyber Insurgency", (Little Brown, 2012) which The New York Times called a "lively, startling book that reads as 'The Social Network' for group hackers." I recently relocated to Forbes' San Francisco office, and was previously Forbes' London bureau chief from 2008-12, interviewing British billionaires like Philip Green and controversial figures like Mohammed Al Fayed; I wrote last year's billionaires cover story on Russia's Yuri Milner, and have broken stories like the Facebook-Spotify partnership in 2011. Before all this I had stints at the BBC and as a radio journalist. You can watch me on 'The Daily Show' here. If you have a story idea or tip, e-mail me at polson@forbes.com or follow me on Twitter: parmy.

Traffic App Waze Introduces Real-Time Map Changes

Remember when maps were 2D, topographical pictures on a piece of paper that you could slowly move a finger across to track your progress? Now the maps themselves move, with Nokia, Apple and Google constantly adding new names and locations to their respective databases.

A few maps services take that dynamism a step further. Waze, a startup based in Israel and Silicon Valley, offers a free app with navigation constantly being re-determined with the help of its own 40-million strong community of users. Now its directions will transform even more frequently, as Waze servers make real-time changes to its maps if enough users reported a roadblock.

The development, announced Wednesday, is aimed at saving drivers time when a sudden road closure takes place or construction blocks their usual route, and dealing with temporary hazards like flooding or storms.

Waze already lets a core minority of volunteer users edit maps at home on their desktop computers. The rest are expected to report into the network when they are stuck in a traffic jam, if police are in the vicinity or if there’s a hazard on the road. The company’s algorithm oragnizes the reports and filters them back to the rest of community as notifications while they’re driving. Now any reports of road blocks won’t just reach the community as notifications – they’ll influence the Waze map itself.

Till now Waze would update the maps stored on its servers every 24 hours. It will continue to do that, a spokesman said, but reports of a road blocks are one map feature that will be updated in real time.

Waze was prompted into the development after a representative from the White House asked the company earlier this year to push out notifications about nearby gas stations to New York drivers who were struggling to find gas stations after Hurricane Sandy. In response, Waze asked its users in the area to report details of lines and prices when they came across a station.

“The next morning in New York Waze was flooded with Map Chat,” said spokesman Michal Habdank. “So we got some validation. People will do this.”

He hastened to add this didn’t mean that anyone with the Waze app could add a road block, in an act of digital vandalism. Waze’s algorithm uses a points system to determine the users it can trust the most to make decisions about its maps. These decisions are weighted on how long a driver has been using the app and how trustworthy they have been in reporting hazards and traffic.

“If we get enough validation a road will get blocked for everyone in real time,” Habdank said, adding that mobile consumers today expected their navigation services to update them on major changes in real time. “Google can’t afford to send vans around everyday,” he said, but Waze had the people to report changes in. “The technology is there and the trust is there.”

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